Posts from the ‘Industry’ Category

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June 11 through 13 is the dates of the first annual EICMA China motorcycle show. EICMA has been holding a show in Milan for many years. Now with the Chinese motorcycle market growing so rapidly with both millions of consumers and hundreds of manufacturers they felt a China based show was justified.

The event was originally planned for Canton, China but will now be in Beijing at the China National Agricultural Exhibition Center. The facility is quite impressive and should make for some great photographs of Chinese motorcycles if anyone has the budget to fly out there.

EICMA China joins the CIMA show in a short list of major Chinese motorcycle shows.

Dale Franks is reporting that US based ATK and South Korea based S&T Motors have entered into an agreement where ATK badged Hyosungs (owned by S&T) will be built in the USA by ATK and sold by select Harley dealerships. The company Harley Davidson is not involved in the deal, the dealerships are taking it upon themselves to work with Frank White, one of ATK’s owners.

The press release on Dale’s site is vague about what models will come out of the agreement but it mentions ATK will leverage Hyosungs street bikes and S&T will leverage ATK’s dirtbike knowledge. Frank White explains:

By joining forces, we believe, we believe we can strengthen our distribution network, reduce our production co sts, spread development costs and substantially accelerate our entry into the street bike business. We also look forward to sharing some of our off-road technology with S&T.

Dale goes on to mention that his sources say a plan is being considered for ATK to restyle and rebrand the GT and GV series of sport bikes and cruisers including the classic styled GV700 introduced this week at EICMA. This would not be a big strech for S&T.

Hyosung is known to be more than willing to allow other companies to rebrand their bikes. The flexibility and quality of the Hyosung products and engines makes it a great option for a marque to leverage for breaking into new markets without the cost of tooling up and staffing production.

United Motors sells most of the Hyosung product line in the US with it’s own graphics and has long term agreement to build it’s own bike around the 650 and 250 cc Hyosung vTwins. Italjet was working on a new version of the Griffon which was a restyled Hyosung GT650 and Fischer Motors uses the GT650 engine in it’s MRX650.

This partnership is a win for all groups involved. ATK may be able to diversify from being a low production niche dirtbike manufacturer and add sport bikes and cruisers to it’s lineup. Hyosung will increase sales using a brand agnostic production driven formula they are very comfortable with. S&T Motors displayed 450cc prototypes of supermoto and dirt machines which were well received by enthusiasts. I’m sure ATK would do a great job helping them make the bikes a reality.

This will be an interesting development to watch unfold. Follow the source link below to Dale’s site to see the press release.